Page:The passing of Korea.djvu/346

 of their methods shows that the Koreans get the best results possible from the amount of labour and capital expended. They understand irrigation, drainage and rotation of crops.

In the manipulation of their produce and in preparing it for market they show commendable skill. Their rice is nicely hulled, and sometimes dusted with powdered kaolin to make it white. They separate the bark of flax and ramie by putting it in a pit upon hot stones and then pouring in water. For many centuries the tough paper which they make from the bark of the paper-mulberry has been famous throughout the Far East, and Mongols and Manchus always demanded large quantities of it in the lists of their tribute.

The Korean ginseng has already been described. Long centuries of apprenticeship have made the Korean an adept in the cultivation and preparation of this useless but highly prized plant. It is a fact with which many Americans may not be acquainted, that ginseng is consumed almost solely for its supposed aphrodisiac qualities, and the huge amounts produced in America and exported to China simply add fuel to the basest passions of man. It may not be as harmful as opium, but the moral principle involved is precisely the same.

A wild variety of this plant, called " mountain ginseng," commands fabulous prices, and a large number of people are annually engaged in searching for it.

The Koreans have developed a keen sense of the value of by-products. The straw and bran from their cereals are carefully utilised, and in a general way it may truthfully be said that what the Korean throws away is not worth keeping.

Another great Korean industry is that of fishing. Taken as a whole, the Koreans eat very little beef. Only the well-to-do can afford it, and as you travel through the country it will be only in the larger centres that it will be procurable. This will readily appear when we add that, though the average wage of the Korean is only about one-sixth as much as that of an 'American, the cost of a cow or bull is almost as much here